Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
TAKING A STAND
Groups stand on corners, collect goods to improve plight of immigrant children
About a dozen people stood at the intersection of Baltimore and Lansdowne avenues in Lansdowne recently as horn after horn honked while the demonstrators waved signs reading, “Families Belong Together” and “We All Belong Here” to protest conditions of immigrant children and families being held at the southern border.
“It’s like they’re kidnapping children,” Jane Rutledge of Lansdowne said. “I mean, what else would you call it – taking children from their family against their will? ... We’re kidnapping them.”
About a year ago, taking a “zero tolerance” approach, Trump administration officials began criminally charging people illegally crossing the southern border with few or no previous offenses. When parents are charged, children were separated from them.
A group of Democratic representatives visited the detention facilities earlier this month and described them as a “human rights crisis,” with people being held in cells with no running water and no showers for weeks. Pictures of children sleeping on the floor, some with pieces of aluminum foil as blankets, surfaced.
The Associated Press reported that photos from Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to these facilities July 12 showed men crammed behind chain-link fences, some standing on toilets to gain breathing space as 900 people were being housed in an area with a capacity for 125 in El Paso, Texas. FoxNews reports of a visit to an Adelanto, California, center for adult males found it clean and detainees playing soccer, with access to medical care.
Throughout this time, parts of country have issued an outcry. Here, in Delaware County, others have also taken action, whether it’s the street corner protesters in Lansdowne or a Drexel Hill church collecting clothing and other items for the detained children.
Lansdowne resident Terry Baraldi, also known as “The Revolting Granny,” said she was sitting at the pool on the Fourth of July, talking with some community members about the migrant situation and family separations.
She said they were saying to each other, “Oh, what should we do? What should we do?”
Baraldi said she answered, “We could go stand on the corner ... Who’s with me? Meet me at the busiest corner in Lansdowne.”
So, they decided to meet every Wednesday during the evening commuter rush and are trying to encourage other like-minded individuals in other towns to do the same.
Having had experience in demonstrating with “Tuesdays with Toomey” in Philadelphia in front of the office of U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., Baraldi said she’s been motivated by singer/ songwriter John Flynn. She said he wrote a song about sharing a meal with a homeless man, rather than just giving him money and the anthem of the song is “don’t just do something, stand there.”
“Which means really look at the person that you’re talking to or talking about, really move yourself out of yourself into them,” she said, adding that it also applied to civic engagement. “Don’t go to one march and think, ‘Aren’t I great?’
“You have to do it every day in some way, shape or form,” Baraldi said, whether through protest or contacting your elected officials.
Thinking of what it’s like to be in the immigrants’ place is what motivated Jayne Young of Lansdowne to participate in the demonstration Wednesday.
“I’m a mother,” she said. “If somebody took my child
away from me, how am I going to feel about that? And so that’s why I do it – because I am empathetic enough to put myself in their shoes.
“It just makes me want to cry,” she said. Others expressed outrage. “What we’re doing at the southern border is just inhumane and wrong and they’re not breaking any laws so we should treat them like people who haven’t broken any laws,” Laurie Wolfe of Lansdowne said. “What else can you say? It’s just so clearly wrong - the whole thing.
“The policy of holding people there, I don’t agree with, but if you’re going to, you need to find a humane way to do it,” she said.
Baraldi said she had noticed support for their cause, but it really turned after the president took to Twitter to attack four Democratic congresswomen, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” the president tweeted, targeting U.S. Reps. Alexandria OcasioCortez, D-14 of New York; Ilhan Omar, D-5 of Minnesota; Rashida Tlaib, D-13 of Michigan; and Ayanna Pressley, D-7, of Massachusetts. All are women of color. Three were born in the United States. Omar is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
“We came out and it was still all the signs about the caged kids but you knew something had turned because we had honks, we had people rolling down their car windows to thank us for doing this,” she said.
Third-generation Italian, Baraldi said all immigrants have skills to share and she appreciates her landscaper.
“My guy is from Honduras and when I couldn’t get him on the phone, I freaked out,” she said.
That said, Baraldi said she recognizes parameters have their place.
“I understand that there’s a problem, I’m not stupid, but what they’re doing now ... is cruel and inhuman and immoral,” she said. “Nobody deserves to be put in a cage and left without food, water, toilets. Nobody deserves that. That’s human rights violations - and that’s punishable. That’s international law.”
Mary Jo Blake of Lansdowne joined the group for the first time this week.
A self-described independent, Lansdowne residents Laurie Wolfe, left, and Jayne Young, right, stand at Lansdowne and Baltimore avenues Wednesday evening to protest the treatment of immigrants at the border. strong pro-lifer, but no Trumper, she said she saw the signs last week and had to do something.
“I really oppose all the cruelty that’s going on behind it, the deliberate cruelty,” she said. “It makes America not America.”
Nearby, other activities are underway.
A recently formed group called UD CARES (Upper Darby Community Alliance for a Respectful and Equitable Society) has formed and describes itself as a “nonpartisan group of allies to the immigrant community, who are members of the Upper Darby and surrounding communities. Our focus is advocacy for fairness, social justice and equity for immigrants, individuals and families.”
In Drexel Hill, Collenbrook United Church at 5290 Township Line Road has been collecting items for the immigrant children being held at Bethany’s Children House in Womelsdorf, Pa., where they are trying to reunite them with their families.
The Collenbrook community has been collecting items for children ages 5-14 years-old for about a month and they plan to continue through the end of August. The community is asked to participate and can drop off items in front of the door, although they ask that donors call the church first at 610789-9590 in case of inclement weather.
The Rev. Melanie Lawrence-Caldwell, pastor, said the effort is in conjunction with what the United Church of Christ Pennsylvania Southeast Conference is doing to assist these children.
“Collenbrook is progressive theologically but mission and serving the wider community and the world is a really important part of who we are,” she said, highlighting that for years, the church has been serving a free community meal the last Thursday of every month, no preaching, no questions asked.
It first began with about 30 attendants and now gets as many as 80 to 120.
“Folks are coming to depend on this and it’s just an amazing time to meet with people,” Lawrence-Caldwell said, adding that it’s not a church-grow gimmick. “It’s about feeding people, it’s about meeting a need in the community.”
Regarding Collenbrook’s collection, the pastor said Bethany Children’s Home is working with Helping Hands, a humanitarian program that reunites unaccompanied youth from Central America with their families. Bethany, she added, is a children’s home and school with residents.
“What they’re doing is they’re housing these children in a safe, holistic environment,” LawrenceCaldwell said. “It takes them out of some of these deplorable, horrible conditions at the border. They have 90 days to reunite them with their families.”
The church is collecting new and very gently used socks, underwear, jeans, sweatpants, T-shirts in solid colors, shorts, pajamas, coats, sweaters, sneakers in all sizes and church attire and shoes in all sizes. The boys’ sizes are small and medium and the girls and misses are extra small, small and medium.
They are also collecting Spanish versions of the Bible, kids’ craft projects and kits, markers, crayons, colored pencils, soccer balls, Spanish books, games for all ages, pillows and pillow cases, twin blankets, fleece throws, blankets, bath towels, kid-friendly soap, shampoo and conditioner, toothbrushes and toothpaste and hairbrushes and combs.
The collection will continue through the end of August.
“As they arrive, we will get them out to Bethany,” Lawrence-Caldwell said. “They need to get out there. They children are arriving as we speak.”
She spoke about why her community felt compelled to act.
“The church recognizes that these children are out of options and it’s not their fault,” Lawrence-Caldwell said. “So why wouldn’t we support them in some way? Take the politics out of it. Just take care of people.”